The Life and Doctrines of Jacob Boehme · 147 of 159 · tr. Franz Hartmann
Chapter 13 (part 15)
If he then, in his imagination, sinks himself into the abyss, he is then already there, and in this abyss is his pearl (the celestial jewel)." ( Grace , ii.
43.) 279:1 This may be expressed in other words by saying that desire gives rise to the formation of a thought, and this thought is made alive by the will, and obtains substantiality and the right to live by being acted out.
It is easier to avoid creating such an Elemental than to kill it after it has been created; because such a being is a part of our own self, and its destruction involves suffering.
280:1 Here it may be remarked that it will hardly be sufficient to have merely a theoretical knowledge of the uselessness of material attractions to cure the desire for them.
In this, as in all other cases, there can be no true self-knowledge except that which arises from practical experience.
282:1 True "repentance" does not consist in fancying oneself to be sorry on account of the consequences to be expected from sins committed in the past, or in worrying about what has been done and cannot be undone now, while perhaps the heart still craves to sin again; but it consists in a turning away from that which is sinful and evil, and in forming the firm resolution to sacrifice and surrender oneself, faults and all, to the immutable will of God.
(Compare True Repentance , i.) 283:1 No man can truly realise his own unworthiness so long as the light has not become active in him.
284:1 We cannot labour in the service of God without dying to our human selfhood.
To "labour in the service of God" does not mean that, for instance, "I, parson, or professor, or author So-and-so, in my human personality, considered as something separate and distinct from God, could with my human smartness render a service to some outside god, or please him, or advise him what to do;" but it is God Himself rendering the service to Himself through our instrumentality, provided that by rising above all conception of self and personality we become identified with Himself.
For this reason all clerical assumption and pretence, by which is assumed an authority apart from that of the God to whom they profess to serve, is repulsive to the religious instinct of man.
285:1 If the saints or "adepts" are often addressed as "children," this is not a mere invented figure of speech, without any adequate cause, but has p.
286 a deep signification; for no one can inherit the kingdom of heaven, i.e.
, divine self-knowledge, unless he becomes like a child that of itself knows nothing in the realm of the spirit.
The transformation of base substance — outer matter or the inner soul — into a purified, perfected, or 'gold' state; the magnum opus as both laboratory practice and spiritual allegory.
References to the 'pearl (the celestial jewel)' and creating an 'Elemental' reflect alchemical spiritual transformation imagery.
John of the Cross's stage of contemplative purgation: a felt absence and aridity of God that strips the soul of attachments to its own consolations en route to deeper union.
Sinking into the abyss to find the pearl suggests a passage through darkness or emptiness.
Eckhart's Abgeschiedenheit/Gelassenheit — radical letting-go of will, image, and grasping that opens the soul to God; distinct from inner_silence (quietness) and from material renunciation, and adjacent to Sufi tark and Buddhist non-grasping as a practice rather than a metaphysical claim.
[auto] The text calls for surrendering oneself faults and all to God's will and rising above all conception of self.
Sufi self-effacement in God — the via by which the lover is unmade as a separate ego and recovered as God's act; specifies the practice/event rather than mystical_union's resulting state.
Labouring in the service of God requires dying to human selfhood and rising above conception of self.
Disciplined inward attention — sitting, focused, or open-awareness practice — as a stand-alone term that umbrellas active_contemplation, inner_silence, and dhyana-style sitting.
The process of sinking into the abyss in imagination and forming thoughts is a form of disciplined inward attention.
Eckhart's radical reading of Matthew 5:3 — the saint as one who wants nothing, knows nothing, and has nothing, having emptied even the will and the self with which to receive God; distinct from renunciation_of_wealth (material poverty).
The state of the child who knows nothing in the realm of the spirit reflects radical spiritual poverty.
The doctrine — central to Eastern Orthodox and Maximian theology — that the human person is progressively transformed into a partaker of the divine nature by grace, not merely justified or united in passing ecstasy.
The text describes the human becoming an instrument through which God serves Himself, indicating transformation into divine nature.